White Stripes, White Rock: The Uncontested Blues Appropriations of the White Stripes

ABSTRACT

Despite the prevalence of the cultural appropriation debate in popular music discourse, white, popular rock band, the White Stripes, appropriated African-American Delta blues culture, particularly from Son House and his song “Death Letter Blues,” without causing contestation. Appropriation of Black culture has occurred ubiquitously throughout recent music history, causing widespread contestation due to power disparity and misrepresentation. Through reviewing literature regarding cultural appropriation, and semiotically analyzing the band’s 2003 performance of “Death Letter” at Sydney’s Livid Festival, we find that the White Stripes’ intentional methods of respectful representation and stylistic disguise mitigated the perception of cultural appropriation in their performance. We posit that the band emulated a pre-established process of transculturation whereby Delta blues traits were absorbed into the 20th century evolution of rock music.

KEYWORDS:

• Blues
• contestation
• cultural appropriation
• Son House
• the White Stripes
• transculturation

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. For further reading on the racialization of blues, and its entry into white audiences and markets, see also Hamilton’s In Search of the Blues and Adelt’s Blues Music in the Sixties.

2. The video recording of the “The White Stripes—Live in Sydney” was accessed via YouTube, which is featured in a compilation video of the band’s whole set at Livid publicly uploaded by user J C. We can assume that the recorded set was originally broadcasted on Channel V due to the watermark embedded in the video. “Death Letter” appears at 19:26–26:46.

3. Paramusical meaning exists alongside music, it is “semiotically related to a particular musical discourse” (Tagg 597).

4. Meaning is constructed via connotation (to signify by implication or association) and denotation (to signify lexically). While musical meaning remains more denotative, paramusical meaning can be generated via signifiers which connote discourse that exists alongside the music (Tagg 585–96).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Charlotte Markowitsch

Charlotte Markowitsch is currently undertaking a PhD with the School of Media and Communication at RMIT University. While her broader interests center around rock and popular music studies, Charlotte’s research has touched on cultural engagement, appropriation, race, and blues and rock history. Currently, Charlotte’s research project investigates aesthetic representations of identity, particularly masculinity, in Australian rock music culture.

Sebastian Diaz-Gasca

Sebastian Diaz-Gasca is an audio engineer, music producer, and lecturer in Music Industry at the School of Media and Communication at RMIT University. His research ranges from ludomusicology, musical narratology, videogame studies, music production, ethnomusicology, and Latin American social studies. Sebastian’s ludomusicological (game music) research focuses on the paraludical relationships between audiences and videogame music, and the personal, social, and economic forces which surround these relationships. He has studied the use of game music outside of gameplay, including the role of videogame cover bands in the social interactions amongst audiences.